Ryan St Laurent

Assistant Professor - Curator of Education (Tenure-Track)

The CU Museum of Natural History is hiring a tenure-track Curator of Education! A great place to work! jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

Integrating Sanger and next‐generation sequencing data sheds light on phylogenetic relationships among gelechioid moths (Lepidoptera: Gelechioidea) The maximum-likelihood analysis of a phylogenomic dataset of 1767 protein-coding genes from 57 ingroup taxa yields a robust family-level topology for Gelechioidea, revealing novel among-family relat...

Gelechioidea, that superdiverse superfamily of Lepidoptera that has been a super mess taxonomically, finally gets some structure at the family level with phylogenomics! Read all about it in our article led by PhD student @etkayapar.bsky.social !
resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

FYI: Despite recent info suggesting otherwise, my lab at CU Boulder is in fact accepting grad students fall 2026! Reach out if interested in insect systematics, phylogenetics, life history, insect-plant interactions.

It’s miller moth season in Colorado – an entomologist explains why they’re important and where they’re headed Miller moths migrate through the state every summer and are sometimes considered to be a pest.

Moths are on the decline (see The Guardian piece out today and reposted below), but miller moths (Euxoa auxiliaris) still get a lot of attention in Colorado

theconversation.com/its-miller-m...

Photo of Dan Janzen holding a caterpillar - image from Guardian article where the photo credit reads: Daniel Janzen has been monitoring insects since the 1970s in Costa Rica’s Guanacaste conservation area. He says he has seen biodiversity crash even in pristine environments. Photograph: P Greenfield/Guardian

Photo of Winnie Hallwachs and Dan Janzen in ACG from Guardian article where the photo credit reads, Janzen and Hallwachs say that while the lack of insects in areas with heavy pesticide use is well documented, the collapse in protected areas is relatively new. Photograph: P Greenfield/Guardian

Photo of light sheet collecting insects in 1984. Photo credit in Guardian article reads, A light trap set up by Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs two weeks after the beginning of the rainy season in 1984 and at the same period in 2019

Photo of light sheet collecting insects in 2019. Photo credit in Guardian article reads, A light trap set up by Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs two weeks after the beginning of the rainy season in 1984 and at the same period in 2019

“There’s just no moths on that sheet.” @tessairini.bsky.social writes in the @theguardian.com about #InsectDecline with #DanJanzen, #WinnieHallwachs and the caterpillars of the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste #ACG in #CostaRica @gdfcf.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Eight months ago, I packed up my life and moved across the country for a job with USDA. After seven years of study and training, I was excited to use the skills I had developed—and excited to serve my country in a way that mattered—protecting our nation’s food crops from insect pests. (1)

We have a postdoc position available in the lab on post-copulatory barriers in hybridizing crickets. We have genomic data ready to be analyzed and crickets ready for experiments. This is a great collaborative group and a study system with a lot of potential for new projects. Join us!